Words of thanks: a closing activity

We have spent the last 18 months working together, and working hard at that. We wanted to ensure participants had a chance to thank each other for all the hard work, sharing of learning, and tremendous effort that has gone into the Standing Team. Therefore, all participants were asked to write their name on a sheet of paper.

They all then passed it to another  person to the table, who wrote a brief, anonymous note about what they learned from this person.

The paper was then passed on, until all participants wrote something on it.

At the end of the workshop, every participants received the letter,  as a way to thank her/him for its contribution to the workshop and to the Standing Team.

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Looking closely at the timeline

We first shared some of the feelings and ideas we had when looking back at our work.

We went then through all the timeline, looking at how activities unfolded, connected and developed.

And we then looked at the individual activities, focusing on the key learnings and challenges around these.

After looking at the timeline, participants discussed in small groups.

• What is a surprise to you?
• What didn’t you know? What do you want to know more about?

A plenary discussion on this followed, and we captured the main highlights on a flipchart.

It was amazing to see how much good work had been done in the last year!

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Inspirational Introductions and Welcome

Sharp on time, we start the workshop!
Sarah gives an inspirational introduction about the workshop.
Lex Kassengerg, Country Director of CARE Nepal, welcomed us here.

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Treasure hunt: Fun evaluation facts about the Standing Team members

To get to know each other, participants were presented with a wall of sticky notes. Each note had a little fact about another participant (gathered from a pre-workshop competencies inventory). Each participant chose two notes (making sure neither were about him/herself) and started trying to find who those facts matched. When they found the right person (the treasure), that person told a little story about what was on the note.

Here’s what kind of treasures exist on the Standing Team:

Kassoum: Ask me about voucher programming and I consider myself as “expert” on secondary data review.
Amadou: Ask me about outcome mapping and ask me about participating in a joint evaluation.
Angela: Ask me about the People First Impact Methodology (P-FIM) and ask me how food poisoning can impact a joint evaluation…
Saji: Ask me about the real time evaluation in Myanmar and ask me about my part in the end-of-project evaluation for the Tsunami response.
Matt: Ask me what I’m learning on the job about being an evaluation team leader and ask me about capturing data using video.
Oliver: Ask me about gender-sensitive M&E and ask me about after action reviews focusing on accountability.
Sekai: Ask me about the Joint Initiative Urban Program evaluation and ask me about the two main types of evaluation that exist.
Adhong: Ask me about the Red Cross/Red Crescent Code of Conduct and ask me about being a part of a joint evaluation.

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Workshop Standards

The facilitators felt everyone had been through enough ground rule setting exercises that there are now workshop standards. There were two main ones:

• We will follow the schedule.
• We will save non-ECB/Standing Team work for during the breaks and before/after workshop hours.

Either from having participated in the AIM Fundamentals Workshop or having read the blog from it, everyone knew this was going to be a photo and video heavy week, so the third standard was:

• We will all be movie stars!

The group only had one more standard to add:

• We will respect all standards.

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Treasure Hunting

After filling in the survey –  and while waiting to process the results –  we did another game to get to know each other: treasure hunting.

The Treasure Hunting Activity can be found in the Building Trust toolkit, here on page 110.

Here’s what we adapted the tool to be:

Have a look at all the book… it has lots to offer!

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All My Friends and Neighbors

We started with a fun game, to introduce participants and to energize the ones still affected by jet lag!

The game is “All My Friends and Neighbors”, and here is how to play it.

15-50 participants. Invite participants to bring chairs into a circle. The leader stand in the center. Make sure there are no empty chairs. Say: “Hi everyone! My name is…” [The group then responds “Hi, …!”] You continue “I am going to look for some friends and neighbors. I will say what friends and neighbors I am looking for. For example, I might look for people who love pizza, who have conducted a joint needs assessment, who love to read, who come from another continent, or who are wearing the color red. If what I say includes you, stand up and change to a different seat. Meanwhile, I am going to look for a seat that becomes free. That will leave a new person in the middle to look for friends and neighbors.”  One rule: If you are one of the friends and neighbors, you must come into the middle before finding a new seat. You may not sit down in the same seat you left nor the one next to you.

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